(opinions on just about anything)

I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman

Children’s books are highly underrated by most people. Harry Potter, of course, gets read by a lot of adults. Yet it still gets labeled as “just” a children’s book. People just seem to think that writing children’s books means dumbing things down. And most people don’t like dumbed down. The attitude is one that I try to fight hard against. Well written words are well written words, regardless of the audience.

Gordon Korman wrote one of my favorite books ever. I Want To Go Home, even now, is one of the funniest books I have ever read. I would put it above Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy or Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. (Both of which are, in their own right, super books.) Gordon Korman has a fantastically dry sense of humor and mixes it with amusing characters and situations.

I Want To Go Home is where all of what Korman does well comes together in a perfect storm. Mike is your average non-athletic guy. The only thing that stands out about him is that nothing stands out about him. A nice enough guy, but not bold enough to really make friends. He is forced into camp and it is with no enthusiasm that he arrives. The only other person at the camp who hates camp more than Mike is the mysterious Rudy.

Camp Algonkian is situated on an island which is devoted entirely to the camping of kids. So when Rudy and Mike become friends the suggestion of escaping camp is ludicrous. It would take someone really smart and able to succeed. Thankfully Rudy has a plan. And another plan. He implements more plans than can be counted on one hand. Yet escape always seems to elude them.

What sounds like a simple story gets twisted in Korman’s situational humor and the result is catastrophically funny. Reviews on Amazon are littered with adults who reminisce about reading the book over and over as a kid, and who still reads it and dies laughing. It is laugh out loud funny, will warm your heart, will make you say “oh no he didn’t!”, and more. Give it a try.

About Me

I am into music, particularly that of a quirky/avant-garde nature. Examples: Sonic Youth, The Residents, The Fiery Furnaces, The Danielson Famile, and so forth. I also like normal indie stuff: Sufjan Stevens, Wilco, Hella, The Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, blah blah blah. And more mainstream things: Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age, Bjork, Kelly Clarkson, The White Stripes, etc. There are very few genres I don’t appriciate to some extent, although I have a tough time enjoying emo, ska, and r&b.

Movies are pretty cool, and although I don’t pretend to be an expert on them, I will talk about them occasionally. I tend to gravitate toward the pretentious serious films like anything from the Tarantino catalog: specifically Jackie Brown, although Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill are both excellent. I also quite enjoy comedies like Office Space, The Princess Bride, and Saved!. Not to mention anything Monty Python related. In fact, British humor is definitely more my speed.

I would say I love books more than movies on the whole. My favorite authors include Madeleine L’Engle, Tad Williams, J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury, and oodles more I am forgetting at the moment. My genre of choice right now seems to be children’s or adolecent fantasy because it does a much better job of capturing the spirit of fantasy than a lot of adult fantasy which insists on throwing in obnoxious, gratuitous sex and stuff.

The one thing most people don’t realize about me when they meet me is my fanatical obsession with Phillies baseball. I am a huge, huge fan and I watch every game that I can on TV. Also a big fan of football (go Eagles)… but nothing really rivals my commitment to the Phillies. The one sport I truly, honestly hate with a passion is basketball. Really, what is the point?

I am a beer snob. I love microbrews. Thankfully Central PA has quite a few very good ones… and is only an hour and a half drive to Philadelphia where there is a whole slew of microbreweries. And hey, we have Stoudts! Every month some church friends and I go to a brewpub and check out the local goods. Expect opinions and reviews on beers right after such trips.

Television. I am a much bigger fan of the products created for TV than the big screen. I mean, Arrested Development? Futurama? Classics. Then there is the old Police Squad show that lasted exactly six episodes before getting canceled… the creators of that went on to do movies like Naked Gun and Airplane!. And can’t forget Monty Python’s Flying Circus… that was one of my best ebay finds.

I have long been a creator of content on the internet. I started off on h2g2.com, a website created by the awesome and clever Douglas Adams, who wrote the entirely too funny Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I was young and naive. It’s a good site but I only go back really once a year and try to remember my bloody log-in info. Then I moved on to the afore mentioned xanga and blogcritics, of which blogcritics is the most prestigious. Check it out, it’s awesome. Blogcritics.org, a “sinister cabal of superior writers.”

The last thing I shall mention in my virgin post here is that I go to Millersville University where I am in the process of making sure everyone realizes that I am totally awesome.